Strong Emotion, Analogy, Metaphor
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When we have a strong emotion, we look for the emotion everywhere in our midst. We unconsciously seek sympathy from the world, whether the emotion we are experiencing is painful or pleasant. Some common examples: sadness perceives a tree as weeping or the rain as tears; the leaves falling from the tree’s branch are a symbol of death; a new love sees itself in the resurrection of the spring. Strong emotion has a binding, enmeshing nature—it needs to absorb the world into itself, just as it needs to be absorbed into the world. Music is so important because it mirrors emotional states through tones and sensuous forms. When we are sad, we prefer a sad song because it matches our mood, rather than a happy one to dispel the mood. Strong feelings lead to analogical and metaphorical thought. What they have in common is the binding impetus. Emotion needs to realize itself wholly, to culminate and reach climax, whereupon it can die. The only way it knows how to conclude is by making deep connections with what lies outside itself—in the world. It does not wish to go away or to be suppressed. It demands to see its own reflection from without. Because the intellect is co-opted by strong emotion when it occurs, language spontaneously starts to do its bidding: the reasoning mind serves its own, emotional ends. If it could speak (as it does in lyric) the emotional state, or mood, seems to command: make everything in nature look like me—I cannot stand any longer being different and separate from the world. The poet then looks out into the world, and perceives strange parallels in the most unlikely of places—as well as in the more conventional, likely ones.
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When we have a strong emotion, we look for the emotion everywhere in our midst. We unconsciously seek sympathy from the world, whether the emotion we are experiencing is painful or pleasant. Some common examples: sadness perceives a tree as weeping or the rain as tears; the leaves falling from the tree’s branch are a symbol of death; a new love sees itself in the resurrection of the spring. Strong emotion has a binding, enmeshing nature—it needs to absorb the world into itself, just as it needs to be absorbed into the world. Music is so important because it mirrors emotional states through tones and sensuous forms. When we are sad, we prefer a sad song because it matches our mood, rather than a happy one to dispel the mood. Strong feelings lead to analogical and metaphorical thought. What they have in common is the binding impetus. Emotion needs to realize itself wholly, to culminate and reach climax, whereupon it can die. The only way it knows how to conclude is by making deep connections with what lies outside itself—in the world. It does not wish to go away or to be suppressed. It demands to see its own reflection from without. Because the intellect is co-opted by strong emotion when it occurs, language spontaneously starts to do its bidding: the reasoning mind serves its own, emotional ends. If it could speak (as it does in lyric) the emotional state, or mood, seems to command: make everything in nature look like me—I cannot stand any longer being different and separate from the world. The poet then looks out into the world, and perceives strange parallels in the most unlikely of places—as well as in the more conventional, likely ones.
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